Repress Me
by Homeslice
Summary: If I wrap my arms around your neck, will you still breathe?[There are repercussions to everything, some things more than others. The waiting period for Lewis to get close enough to kiss– because Joel's legs will not carry him, even to something he needs.]


1Summary: If I wrap my arms around your neck, will you still breathe? (There are repercussions to everything, some things more than others. The waiting period for Lewis to get close enough to kiss– because Joel's legs will not carry him, even to something he needs.)

Disclaimer: I do not own Blood+.

Pairings: Lewis/Joel

- - - -

Lewis is a man Joel studies intently. It is those browned hands, calloused and kind (and why is it that he is clapping you on the shoulder at one moment and pressing down the trigger of a gun with his finger the next?), which fascinate Joel. There is something in Lewis which mutters 'I know something you don't know, but I'll never tell you'.

"Tell me." Joel says, wheeling his wheelchair to face Lewis, and Lewis answers with a question.

"Tell you what?" About the hands that play two separate roles, about the eyes hidden behind sunglasses, about the way his cologne smells like peppermint but underneath it he always smells like blood. Lewis plays many roles, and Joel does not know where to begin, which face to ask and which not to ask (there are consequences to everything, and 'everything' is a hard thing to avoid when you are trying to tiptoe around more repercussions– for you already have so many, and you glance down at your limp legs for a moment before moving your gaze -_anywhere else_- to Lewis's face again).

"Everything." Joel says, because he is tired of tiptoeing.

"That'll cost you a leg." Lewis responds, and smiles wryly, shuffling the papers on his desk. Joel does not bother thinking the change of the original way the phrase was worded was by accident.

Lewis, unlike Joel (Joel, with his useless legs and his feminine face and his wide eyes and his thinness, who can count his ribs though he prefers not to simply because he forgets to eat, who carries his ballpoint pen around like a significant other and has it spew out more ink than he spews out tears, because it is _meant _to be that way, because he can't afford anything or anyone else even if he tries– and he is trying so hard), does not make mistakes.

And when he does, they are of the intentional sort.

- - - -

Joel does not have any legs to give. He will wait until Lewis asks for an arm.

- - - -

Lewis is someone Joel cannot understand. He is gluttonous and sloth-like, greedy but willing to share (he will not give up everything he has for another, not like Saya, but she is always the best of you, always one step higher one foot faster _go, go, go, _but still not fast enough). His smile is real enough to be comforting, not like their own apathetic faces or false pleasantries, and if Lewis were gone, even though they do not realize it, every room would feel more empty than it does now.

When Clara died, there was no mourning. When Riku died, there was limited mourning. When Saya would come back from a fight, covered in blood that was most definitely not her own, and would lock herself in her room and wish she _could _die, there was only temporary lag.

Joel wheels himself out the hallway and feels heavier than usual. His legs sleep, and do not bother blinking up at him every once and a while, just to let him know that he is (_finefine perfectly well peachy alright okay, okay, okay, you'll be okay even if you're not_) useful after all.

(Are you?)

- - - -

'Tell me your secret, and I'll tell you mine.' Lewis's eyes seem to say, the lighting catching his sunglasses for a moment and making them stand out behind the frames– eyelashes, lids, carved and haunting and not ugly.

Joel would tell him, but it would feel inappropriate to use his wheelchair for the movement to get so close (it would feel mechanical, untraditional, unmoved– and you have had far enough of your share of unmovedness, you certainly have, and you are sick of it).

He will wait forever if he has to for the use of his legs, for the congratulatory softness (roughness?) of Lewis's cheek under his hand. Joel does not bother asking himself if forever is _enough, _if he will never be able to walk again, because he is too disheartened to do so.

(So you think– 'I would also be quite alright if he came over here himself to kiss me instead of me walking to him.', but you are not sure that the odds of that are much better than your first wish, even if your hope is more pure and more energetic on this thought rather than the other.)

- - - -

It is gloomy and Autumn, where with every leaf collapsed from it's tree perches on the ground, their hearts sink further, and every gust of wind that whips their cheeks makes their faces too cold (bitter) to smile.

It is when Lewis says to Joel something like, 'It'll cost you an arm.'

Joel could care less about arms, and about truths. There is a man in front of him with eyes like peach pits (and here is the difference– the difference that instead of sucking him in and spitting him out he sucks you in and spits _you _out, so clever and wry is he), who's posture is balanced only on the tip of his toes though he still does not fear falling.

Arms and truths are meaningless– in the end, it is legs that matter. The wheels of his wheelchair, replacing his legs poorly and mechanically, have turned his heart into a loud, thumping ball of gears and bells and chains. If he merely moves, someone could hear his jingling, his shifting, his heart rising anew from the frost and rising up and rising anew again.

Through the smears of oil and rust, his heart has the ability to be again.

"I'll tell you."

"I don't want to know."

And so he is, and so they are, and so the lips that press to Lewis's cheek are dried and uncomfortable and afterwards when he smiles ever-so-slightly, they crack (and broken mirrors mean seven years of bad luck, as you see Lewis's lips twitching upwards when he tells you your mouth is bleeding down your chin).

- - - -


End file.
